A few weeks ago, one of the members of my online writing community [Shenandoah Writers Online] approached me about starting up a satellite chapter of our group. I have SW(IRL) [Shenandoah Writers (In Real Life)], and she wanted to have something in her area of the country [the Pacific Northwest].

Introducing . . . the WB!

However, with the name of the online group being associated with the Shenandoah River Valley, said member suggested I change the name to be more inclusive.

I had two reactions:

1.) It’s an online group—and *most* SWOers aren’t from the Shenandoah Valley, so what does it matter what the name is? If Marice can be one of us from Brisbane, Aus., then why do we need to change it?

2.) ZOMG. What she’s asking me to do is start a writing organization.

The more I thought about that, however, the more I realized I *already had* started a writing organization. And, while it seemed a bit scary to think of it in that way, my mind started going ping! ping! ping!, and it all sort of clicked into place.

When I started the online writing community, my goal was to bring writers together. I wasn’t meeting a ton of writers in my area [I’d just moved to a new city and state], and I wanted to connect with other write-brained peeps and stay in touch with those I’d met at writers’ conferences.

As well, a big part of my love for writing is teaching people how to write and seeking advice from others who know more about it than I do. I learn about my writing during both of those interactions—we all do. Each connection we make enriches us that much more.

All that corniness [which I totally mean, actually] aside, I realized I have a “vision” for Shenandoah Writers Online. That’s why, starting now, we will be known as “The Write-Brained Network” [or “the WB,” as I’ll nerdily be calling it]. We even have a new URL!

While we’re not going to be morphing into something completely different, we’re going to build our skyscraper on the great foundation we already have. 🙂 I’ve put a few things in place in order for that to happen—changing our name is just step one.

And, perhaps it’s a bit premature to state this, but I would like to have our own IRL conference sometime down the line. That’s the five-year plan anyway. Will it happen overnight? Absolutely not. But the wheels are turning, and I just happen to live in one of the most gorgeous, most peaceful spots in the country—in the Massanutten ski resort. That has a conference center. And a BAJILLION rental properties.

We’re still going to be free to join, and we’re still going to offer all the same cool stuff as before—but now that our numbers are getting bigger, I think our scope should as well. We have reached more people than I thought possible at our inception eight months ago, and I can’t wait to see where we’re going.

Like this:

“In the Blogosphere” is a series, which lists links to writing-related blogs I’ve stumbled upon throughout a given week (usually).

I’m admittedly behind with my Blogosphere posts—I have about 50 links saved, dating all the way back to May/June-ish (oh noes!)—but they are all still worth a look. I’ll catch up eventually, right?

STORY OPENERS

Story openers is a topic we’ve touched on before, here on the blog (here’s the postfrom our Shenandoah Writers Online live chat on that very subject), but let’s see what other have had to say about it.

Here, D4EO Literary’s Mandy Hubbard dishes on the five things she looks for in the opening pages.

Over at his blog, Constant Revision, the inimitable Simon C. Larterexplains the methods behind the madness in his very own opening lines.

And, for a little bit of fun, YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) lists a ton of first lines—so you can see a lot of these tips in action.

And, why stress over the query? WordServe Literary’s Rachelle Gardner divulges all the secrets to a great pitch right here!

ON SANITY

As kids and teacher-types go back to school, and as the summer comes to a close (can you believe it’s almost the end of August??), it’s time to start thinking about that evil time management thing again.

Here’s some advice on how to juggle it all from time management master and über-awesome young adult author Maggie Stiefvater.

I’m leaving for the Romance Writers of America national conference (in Orlando!) Wednesday, and I have—oh, I don’t know—a bajillion things to do between now and then. So I’m not sure I’ll be as available as I’d like in terms of blogging and such, but I do plan to keep you posted throughout the week/weekend on my experiences.

Hey, Angela . . . I have a lot of crap to do this week!

For instance, I hope to regale you with tales of all the awesomesauce things I’m doing and learning—and all the faboo people I’m meeting.

I mean, I’ve already been invited to sing karaoke with my Twitter soulmate (or Twitsom, as we now call each other), Cambria Dillon and some other cool chicas. So, that should be a decent story, right?

Um—did I mention Twitsom and I haven’t met yet? But we share a love of all things YA, Sour Patch Watermelons, and triathlon-doing husbands, so I’m not worried. We are going to rip on Tim Tebow and sing Lady Gaga, and all will be well with the world.

Unless, of course, we discover we are actually the same person . . . which could be the case? There’s a SFF story just waiting to be written! But I’ll let you know once I meet her Wednesday. 🙂

IN OTHER NEWS

HOLY CRAP—MEG CABOT IS GOING TO BE AT RWA!!!! So, I’m basically dying. And my flight gets in at almost the *end* of one of her author signings, so I’m dying in a different way over that. <frownies> But I’m hoping to stalk catch her another time during the conference.

Tonight—Monday, July 26—I’ll be hosting a live chat on Shenandoah Writers Online (from 9-10 P.M. EST.). The topic is writers’ conferences. Bring any and all questions you have about conferences to the chat—and, if you’ve attended any such functions, we’d love to have you share your experiences!

To enter the chat, simply log into Shenandoah Writers Online and click “Group Chat” at the bottom right of the main screen.

You must be a member of Shenandoah Writers Online to participate in the chat, but we’d love to have you join.*

OK, that’s all for now. Writing this blog post wasn’t even on my list—yeeks!

Like this:

“In the Blogosphere” is a series, which lists links to writing-related blogs I’ve stumbled upon throughout a given week (usually).

I’m admittedly behind with my Blogosphere posts—I have about 50 links saved, dating all the way back to May (oh noes!)—but they are all still worth a look. I’ll catch up eventually, right?

QUERIES

Querying/pitching is up there in terms of the most discussed topics on industry blogs and at writing conferences. I find it always helps me to look at others’ queries in order to better gauge what does and doesn’t work with my own pitches.

Here, at The Public Query Slushpile, fellow Ohioan Rick Daley has dedicated an entire forum to queries and feedback. The idea of the blog being? Leave feedback on others’ queries. Post your queries.* Get feedback from others. It’s that simple. The site isn’t exactly like Janet Reid’s Query Shark or Jodi Meadows’s Query Project (in that it’s not just industry pros offering feedback—it’s an open forum for all), but the entries do get a good amount of feedback from readers. And we are all trying to appeal to readers after all, are we not? Check it out!

Who says slush can't be delicious?

Over on her blog, Canuck mathematics textbook writer (<—Yes, I included that part for my math-ed professor hubs!) Cheryl Angstcompiles and comments on a list of 10 things Howard Morhaim Literary Agency’s Kate McKean tweeted as things that she thinks while she reads queries. Very interesting read!

Going along with the two, more regular, query workshops above, D4EO agent Mandy Hubbard conducted her own query clinic back in May. Here is the post where she discusses the concept, and here is the last in the series (I’ve included this one because she links to all four of the queries she workshopped in it).

TICK TOCK

Summer seems to be about the hardest time of year to find butt-in-chair-and-write time.

Here, YA paranormal romance author Maggie Stiefvater (Shiver, Linger, etc.) offers some thoughtful advice on how writers can to best manage their time.

And, um, how random is this? Molly is famous! About a month ago, Annalemma Magazine used a picture of Molly (my beagly beagle) in an article they did about online writing communities. The caption says that that pic was the first to come up when they Google image searched online writing community! (It looks like she’s since been ousted, however. It’s on the fourth page.)

You're not the only famous beagle!

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*There is a debate about whether or not to post your original work online. It’s up to you. Enough industry blogs host contests or query workshops all the time where people post their original queries, so I wouldn’t necessarily worry about someone stealing your work . . . but it *can* happen. It would probably be pretty easy to prove your query was yours, though—particularly if you posted in on the Internet. If you’d like feedback from other writers but you’re wary of posting your work on an open forum, try a password-encrypted, by-invitation-only community like *shameless plug* Shenandoah Writers Online!

If you missed the chat, or if you were there but it was too buggy to keep up (sorry!), here are the highlights:

THE GIST

At the start of the chat, attendees posted either their own story openings or the openings of their favorite books. This was not meant to be a critique session (although a little of that went on); rather, we pointed out what the reader learns from each opening and what makes each opening successful or not.

This led to talk about what it means to have a “successful” opening. It’s subjective, of course; but, for the most part, we agreed that in order to deem a story opening a success, it has to hook the reader in some way—because, while readers mightgive the author a few chapters before giving up, agents pretty much won’t. Translation: Your opening needs to do something—and right away.

As we looked at real examples, we noted that the best ones oriented the reader. As one member put it, an opening has to service your narrative in a clear way.

The best openings were those that:

Showed voice

Gave context

Displayed character insight

Raised questions

WAYS TO ORIENT THE READER

Work in age the main character’s age—especially important if you’re writing children’s or YA

Pay close attention to voice and diction here, as that can be very telling

Hone in on structure and pacing (i.e., if it’s supposed to be a tense action scene, your sentence structure and punctuation

What's my motivation?

should mimic that)

Indicate genre or story type

Injecting setting can do this (i.e., placing your characters in the woods might suggest it’s fantasy)

Names can do this (i.e., if a character’s name is “Zender,” like in one of the examples we analyzed, that gives the sense it’s sci-fi or fantasy—more so than if the dude’s name is “Bob”)

Indicate protag’s goals/motivations (i.e., if it starts off talking about a dungeon escape, the reader might deduce it’s probably not contemporary fiction)

THINGS TO AVOID

Avoid gimmicks

Like the “fake-out” beginning (where you set it up to look like one thing is true, but you read the rest of the page and discover it isn’t. Many agents—Nathan Bransford, for one—shy away from the “gotcha” opener)

Probably don’t start with poetry

You don’t need to start with a fireworks display—particularly if you can’t follow it up anything

If you do this, it can come off as “gimmicky”

EXAMPLE

Opening of Stephen King’s Gunslinger series:

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

This tells so much without saying anything at all, really

Good guy vs. bad guy

A chase—an escape

In many ways, this one line serves as a microcosm for the entire series.

MORE, PLEASE!

Up-and-coming YA author Jodi Meadows was kind enough to send me her opening to the first book in her New Soul trilogy, Erin Incarnate. I have posted her thoughts it on Shenandoah Writers Online under the “Files” tab at the top of the main page. In the file, Jodi shows her original opening and talks about the changes her agent wanted her to implement—and why making those changes made her opening stronger.

We also indicated you can probably play devil’s advocate for each of these suggestions or cite counter examples in published books. However, it’s important to remember we’re trying to establish some “rules” here—not exceptions. As well, we’re talking about writers trying to break into the industry given today’s market—not established authors whose books are going to sell a bajillion copies no matter what they write.

I was so impressed with the amount of participation we had in May with SheNoWriMo and I received so much positive feedback from SW(IRL) and Write-Brainiacs about the contest that I’d like to implement another, similar, writing program.

I drew my inspiration from weight-loss program WeightWatchers’s point system (in case that wasn’t obvious); however, instead of trying to reduce your mass, we’ll be bulking up—on words written, that is.

From what I gather, the WeightWatchers folks design a program—specific to each person—based on a number of factors: ideal body weight according to height, age, etc.

Participants are then given a number of “points” they are allowed to consume per day, per week, etc. (foods are assigned numeric values in the way of these points), and they can eat whatever foods they want to get to their allotted points—as long as they don’t exceed their daily/weekly goals.

THE PROGRAM

With SheNoWriMo, although participants picked reasonable daily word-count goals, sometimes life got in the way. In that event, people usually caught up over the next few days.

That said, I’d like WordWatchers to be more like that. Let’s stick to weekly writing goals.

Set a weekly word-count goal. Divvy up the daily writing however you want, but make sure you get to your WordWatcher word-count total by the end of each week. Easy peasy. This will allow you to take days off without the guilt—whatever fits your schedule.

For instance, if you think your schedule will only allow you to comfortably write 3500 words/week (that’s two pages a day), fine. That’s your goal. Post it on the WordWatchers discussion in the forum on The Write-Brained Network and on your WB “wall,” and have at it.

Just set a goal for yourself, and do the writing. And keep us posted about it. Ideally, I’d like all participants to keep a daily record (on their WB walls) of their progress, like last time—it was nice when we were all cheering each other on—but since WordWatchers is a little more flexible than SheNoWriMo, perhaps it’s more feasible for you to mark your weekly progress. We can still root for the participants.

SOME WORDS ON WORD COUNT

"One . . . ah-ah-ah . . ."

As a general rule, 250 words = one page of writing. That should help you gauge the amount of words to which you think you can commit every week.

Remember: Don’t be too aggressive. Don’t make it impossible to reach your weekly goals, or you might get discouraged from continuing with the program. However, don’t be wimpy with your goals, either; challenge yourself.

Essentially, tailor your WordWatchers program to your lifestyle as well as your writing tastes/purposes.

ON YOUR MARKS . . .

We’ll start July 1, so think about your ideal weekly word count, and keep your eyes peeled for the WordWatchers discussion on the WB forum.

As with SheNoWriMo, my ultimate goal here is to get folks writing. Something. Consistently.

I do hope a lot of peeps will consider taking part in it.*

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*You must be a member of the Write-Brained Network to participate. Not a member yet? E-mail me or click here to get started.